Lessons from the classroom

Ideas need an audience. But to gather an audience, you have to sell.

Not in the transactional sense alone — but in the deeper, more human sense. Every interaction, every conversation, every attempt to persuade or inspire is, at its core, an exchange of values. A kind of sale.

Even as you read this, I’m selling you on a premise: that sales is everywhere — not just in business, but in life.

Think back to your most memorable teachers. The ones whose lessons stayed with you long after the final exam. Chances are, they didn’t just teach — they sold you on ideas. Ideas about fairness, curiosity, discipline, or imagination. Some of mine left a deep mark — especially those who showed us how to see the world differently. They weren’t aiming for a pipeline of perfect grades. They understood that each of us came from different backgrounds, with different expectations. And somehow, they reached us all. That’s empathy. That’s strategy. That’s sales.

Back to the boardroom. In business, sales is often portrayed as a numbers game — more calls, more emails, more hustle. But beneath the metrics lies something more nuanced: psychology.

To sell effectively, you need to understand how people think, what they value, and how they make decisions. That’s where planning becomes powerful — not just as a process, but as a behavioral lens. This becomes even more critical across cultures. Selling in the U.S. and Europe, for example, demands entirely different psychological approaches.

In the U.S., there’s a cultural bias toward speed, optimism, and decisiveness. Buyers often welcome bold claims and rapid execution. The mindset is action-driven: try, test, move. Europe, on the other hand, is a mosaic of cultures — each with its own rhythm. Buyers are often more cautious. They value context, credibility, and long-term trust. A high-volume, high-velocity pipeline might work in the U.S., but in Europe, it could feel impersonal or tone-deaf. This isn’t just a tactical distinction. It’s a psychological one. To succeed, you need to map not just a sales journey — but a buyer’s internal one. Their emotional landscape. Their unspoken questions. 

Funny enough, my best teachers did this instinctively. They didn’t analyze cognitive patterns on a whiteboard. But they knew how to reach a room of a hundred wildly different kids. They sold us on ideas that shaped who we became. And years later, I’m still peeling back layers of those lessons.

Sales is human and I can only hope to sell ideas with the same grace my teachers once did.

C